This paper draws on Hannah Arendt’s political thought to question the relationship betweentheory and practice in psychology and the public role of psychologists. One of Arendt’s maincontributions to political theory was to underline the specificity of political action, and tostress that politics should not be ruled by pure theoretical reason or reduced to the technicalmanagement of social issues. Applied to psychology, a view of the relationship between theoryand practice that ignores this specificity may well lead to efficacious applications, but it has acertain number of politically problematic consequences. These include the a priori disqualificationof opinions, a loss of common sense, the a priori definition of the world as a set of variables, andthe a priori definition of people as “material” to be shaped rather than as political actors. Suchconsequences are problematic insofar as they can lead to the exclusion of people from the publicrealm and undermine the very possibility of genuine political action. These points are illustratedand discussed through examples drawn from psychoanalysis and experimental social psychology.
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